ABOUT

The Beyond Bretton Woods initiative proposes to create a multi-disciplinary international taskforce to design transformative, plug-and-play type financial solutions and disruptive policy recommendations to address both structural finance fault lines as well as crisis challenges affecting the international monetary order and society at large.

Vision Statement

Beyond Bretton Woods initiative will lay the foundations for an international financial architecture that services people and enhances prosperity by focusing on fair, equitable, eco-centric, and regenerative transactions.

Mission Statement

Beyond Bretton Woods will trigger a radical paradigm shift in the purpose, principles, and practices that underpin the systems and institutions that collectively make up the international financial architecture. The initiative attempts to deliver outcomes that best serve the interests of humanity and nature, ensuring inclusive and equitable outcomes, as well as quality of life for all.

The Bretton Woods architecture no longer functions for the emerging poly-crisis.

Over and above the impact of societal and economic trends, the Bretton Woods architecture, and by extension the markets and society, are now facing concurrently, a Polycrisis of Multi-headed Challenges consisting of:

  1. Climate Change

  2. Public Health Pandemic

  3. Biodiversity Loss

  4. Inequality and Injustice

  5. Geo-political Tensions

  6. Distrust in Institutions

  7. Loss of Food and Water Access

  8. Financial Instability

  9. Migration Flows

  10. Data Privacy

  11. Artificial Intelligence

  12. Failed States and Gang Violence

The 80-year-old international financial architecture is no longer adequate to contain and address the fault lines created by societal and financial trends, as well as the challenges emanating from the current poly-crisis.

Foundation History

Beyond Bretton Woods (BBW) was founded on the occasion of COP26 in Glasgow in 2021. The initiative grew as an outcome of the 75th Bretton Woods anniversary celebration at the original treaty venue organized by the Bancor Foundation.

James Vaccaro and Frank Van Gansbeke wanted to channel several of the then-emerging thought processes and recommendations in a more permanent, global think tank initiative.

Beyond Bretton Woods was invited to the foundation meeting of the Bridgetown Initiative, at the invitation of the Prime Minister of Barbados in July 2022.